Blog Assignment 1

The Things They Carried and On Keeping a Notebook both highlight the importance of telling and sharing stories to keep them alive. Based off fact, stories are never told %100 truthfully based off our mood, setting, etc. Human perception rather exaggerates certain things or people and changes a story completely based from the author. Both authors (O’Brien and Didion) agree that story telling proves to be more believable and interesting, usually because they are remembered and told from eventful moments in a person’s life. "By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others. You start sometimes with an incident that truly happened, like that night in the shit field, and you carry it forward by inventing incidents that did not in fact occur but that nonetheless help to clarify and explain" (O'Brien, 152). O’Brien is clearly stating that objectifying your own experience is better than the factual happenings from the event you experienced. I agree with what O’brien is stating, because my experiences have me made me the person I am today whether it was for the best or worse.  The tools (experiences) that we are given in life determines the person we are, depending on how we interpret them and how we absorb them. Didion further supports the idea by saying "So the point of my keeping a notebook has never been, nor is it now, to have an accurate factual record of what I have been doing or thinking" (Didion, 83). Didion plainly states that it was never for facts or records and continues in the next paragraph. “Very likely they [relatives of Didion] are right, for not only have I had trouble distinguishing between what happened and what merely might have happened, but I remain unconvinced that the distinction, for my purposes, matters.” (Didion, 83). When Didion compared the “same” memories to other family members, they told her that her memories were wrong based off their own memories. The pinnacle of the subject is that every person has unique experiences that we will never have. Everyone you know is in their own little world experiencing some things we will but from different angles. Not only is every person special in their own way but their experiences are as well.

                Identity can play a key role in Authors writing. The author can use their Identity in many was such as affiliating themselves with certain ideas or sending a message to the reader of their own ideas. As previously said before, our experiences determine who we are, and that is our identity. As humans we can look at our own selves and our own body and distinguish our identity, and look at a decade old pictures and identify ourselves and our differences.  As you read The Things They Carried, O’Brien feeds an eating guilt thinking and writing about the war, wishing he could never experience the horrible events that transpired. “But the thing about remembering is you don’t forget. You take material where you find it, which is in your life, at the intersection of past and present.” (O’Brien, 83) O’Brien identifies himself with his memories who makes him into then person he is. Tragic and first time memories stick with us with most as we are the most vulnerable to the stimuli that affects us. That is what identifies us is the memories that still linger in our brain, teaching us valuable lessons or putting your mind into a less healthier state. To add on Didion states “It all comes back. Perhaps it is difficult to see the value in having one self’s back in that kind of mood, but I do not see it; I think we are all well advised to keep on nodding terms we used to be whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the minds door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.”  (Didion, last page). We must accept who we are and our identity, and even our past identitys because we must make amends to the things we have done to others, and the things they have done to us. Whether what we write down is true or not, the memories we hold dear to us is what matters, and what molds us into who we are. The importance of writing is not only to hold memories, but to help us learn as people, and give us experiences that can mean something to us.